Some mornings, Hulkow arrived in his Marshall (Mich.) High football office to find statistics on a spreadsheet left by Gase, his starting tight end. Other times, there were offensive tendencies culled from game video.

Often, there were new plays. This particular play had two receivers and two tight ends — "I think the plays always involved him," Hulkow chuckles — running deep, vertical patterns. Thus, the "All Pop."

"We had a Division I quarterback and most high-school defenses played [three defensive backs deep]," Hulkow said. "Adam's play had four receivers attacking those three. So the quarterback just had to find who wasn't covered."

Sports with Perk: Omar Kelly and Chris Perkins give their take on the hiring of Adam Gase and the changes made to the Dolphins front office with Dave Hyde.

Sports with Perk: Omar Kelly and Chris Perkins give their take on the hiring of Adam Gase and the changes made to the Dolphins front office with Dave Hyde.

"Hell, yeah," Hulkow said. "It became a staple of our offense. We began running other plays off it, running plays, too. It was, really, a simple thing with a lot of thought behind it."

Does this help any? Does this begin to explain who Gase is and how, at 37, he is the NFL's youngest head coach?

This is an NFL offseason where offensive coordinators are being bumped up to head coaches with the primary idea to solve quarterback issues. The Dolphins are at the front of the line here. Ryan Tannehill took a step back last year.

Now comes Gase to no bias, no background here — and certainly no convention to his career path.

Son of a coach? His father is an engineer.

Great former player? Gase was a slow-footed, average-talented, 6-foot-1 tight end who, "knew he had to work hard to start in high school," says Bill Dryer, who was Marshall's receivers coach and now coaches at Albion (Mich.) College.

But when Saban's defensive coordinator at Michigan State, Dean Pees, came to recruit Marshall, Hulkow told him of a Michigan State-bound student who couldn't play but might still help the program.

That's how Pees gave his business card to Gase and said, "Look me up when you come to campus." That's how Gase began doing video and statistical work as an 18-year-old freshman, how he became a graduate assistant and then accompanied Saban to Louisiana State in 2000 in the same position.

There were future moments of indecision, the way there are following any dream. With student loans coming due and earning $8,000 a year, Gase prepared to quit to sell insurance.

"Thankfully, I had three great friends who talked me out of it," he said.

Saban helped him land a bottom-rung job in the Detroit Lions scouting department in 2003. He began helping some on special teams. It was there Lions running back coach Wilbert Montgomery told offensive coordinator Martz to watch Gase, because, "This kid has something."

"I gave him a few projects, and he handled them," said Martz, whose offensive schemes helped St. Louis to a Super Bowl title in 1999. "I was hard on him, and he handled that. There are a few times in your career you know you've met someone special — someone with the passion, the commitment, the personality. Adam was one of those few for me."

Martz made Gase the quality control coach of the offense. He told Gase to follow him around and take notes. "I'm going to make you a quarterbacks coach," he said.

In 2007, Gase became the Lions quarterbacks coach. He was 29. The Lions' quarterback, Jon Kitna, was 34. Age issues? Experience problems? Playing background concerns? That was all trumped by something Kitna said.

"I told him, 'All I need you to do is help me complete more passes,' " said Kitna, now the coach of Waxahachie High in Texas. "That's really all I wanted any coach to do, no matter their age or anything."

That was another lesson for Gase: All good players want coaching. They want to get better. And it was his job to help them. When Martz moved to San Francisco in 2008, he took Gase with him. Gase began writing game plans to compare to the ones Martz did.

"What he did with that was remarkable," Martz said. "He was right in line with how I looked at things. He had an intuition and feeling that's rare. He understood concepts, how to attack a defense, how to deal with quarterbacks. Trust me, that's unusual."

The next year, Gase took a job in Denver, where a low-level co-worker in Detroit, Josh McDaniels, was head coach. McDaniels didn't win. But Gase thrived and, when Tim Tebow became quarterback, the quarterback coach didn't focus on the limited nature of his skills.

Gase did what has become a philosophical tenet of his, one he talked about with the Dolphins roster upon being named coach.

"We are going to look at the roster we have right now and build out schemes around our players," he said. "So as a starting point, you look at what my background is on offense, we've run multiple things."

With Tebow, he used short passes and Tebow runs. That helped the Broncos win a playoff game. When Manning arrived with a Hall of Fame skill set, Gase had a different role of maximizing a great player. Manning's 2012 and 2013 seasons produced the best two-year run of his career.

But what Gase did in Chicago with Cutler might ultimately have sold the Dolphins on him. A year ago, Cutler was seen as an albatross for the Bears as evidenced by his 18 interceptions against 28 touchdowns.

"The starting point was trying to find ways to help him in the pocket when things aren't going well," Gase told MMQB this season. "What can we do to help him either create, or protect him? Whether it be a play call, or just working on drills that if he has to move and there are a lot of bodies around him, what's the best way to do that?"

Sound familiar? That's an issue with Ryan Tannehill, who has been sacked in the past four years more than any other NFL quarterback. Cutler lost his three primary receivers, but still cut his interceptions to a career low of 11 and had a career-high 92.3 rating.

Can Gase help solve Tannehill?

"I think what he's done in at Denver and Chicago, with two totally different offense and quarterbacks, shows his talent," Martz said. "He's always adapted to who he has."